


i'll say a word for sickness, she is my favorite mistress

by civilorange



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Happy Ending, bleeding sickness, caretaker!clarke, seven years, sick!lexa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 19:11:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civilorange/pseuds/civilorange
Summary: seven years after the mountain there's a new bleeding sickness and clarke's fine until she realizes lexa's infected.





	i'll say a word for sickness, she is my favorite mistress

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from tumblr, got a little long, and i didn't even finish it. i was brushing off my third-person perspective because so much of what i write is in second-person, which is not a problem most people have. another chapter? maybe two? not too long.

When word comes to Arkadia that a new sickness has fallen the largest shipping village in the Lake People’s territory it’s a shock to the Coalition. It rattled cages and was a spur in the side of restless armies—they longed for battle, for a fight, but this wasn’t one they’d be able to beat through sword tips and war bellows. Arkadia had the doctors with the most training, with the most chance of being able to _do_ something—so Clarke had left. A caravan of a dozen healers from seven of the thirteen clans—most of them being Arkadian trained doctors—and she’d tried her hardest to push leading the mission onto someone else.

It hadn’t worked—they still whisper sometimes—like little songbirds in the night, while they gather around fires, nestling close as winter sets in. Clark tries not to flinch when she hears _wanheda_ , or mention of the mountain—or the half dozen other things she’s had to do to survive. She tries not to grind her teeth when they speak of the Commander and everything the girl-king had done in the name of peace—a laundry list indeed. She can’t help knowing that it isn’t a true hurt—not in her heart like it used to be—but along her skin like little prickles of pain.

Reminders that mosquitos kill just as readily as lions—if not more so.

The forest gets quiet, and the air tastes like copper. The flickering glow of fire in the distance raises the hairs on the back of Clarke’s neck; it’s the electric charge in the air, the sizzle at the edges of her fingertips. She’s used to danger being _loud_ ; clattering armies and wailing horns. There’s a malicious silence to the night. Everything animal inside her bristles awake, trying to urge her to turn around and flee—to put distance between her and this new and unknown danger.

Despite the buildings growing in size, the village getting closer, there’s still no people—still no _life_. Clarke holds up a hand when she sees movement beyond—something sliding between the shadows.

It’s Lexa.

“Hold,” Clarke says when rifle tips begin to raise, watching the staggering gait of someone so usually sure footed. “It’s the Commander.” She didn’t think anyone with her would recognize Lexa by the width of her shoulders, or the length of her stride—the strangest things that decided to stay with Clarke, even all these years later.

There’s something in the way she stands, something unnatural to the slant of the Commander—hands open and empty, fingers extended but limp. Her entire frame is tipped dangerously to one side, only her locked right leg keeping her standing. There is an unseeing film to usually bright green eyes, an absence that was more concerning than any physical weakness—black had already begun falling from the corners of Lexa’s eyes. Rolling down her cheeks, mixing with the black dragged down her cheeks and up to her temples.

“ _Klark_ ,” there was an inflection that seemed harder, thicker somehow, as Lexa took two swaying steps forward. Her weight tossing carelessly to the balls of either foot, somehow staying up even when so much said she should tumble to the ground. There was a strange kind of grace to the tottering warrior; a seamless shift of her weight, that she seemed to always catch at the exact last moment. Falling forward with each step until her bloody palm smacked against the side of a building; muscles twitching erratically under tan skin, fingers going white with the effort.

The village behind her burns—the manic kind of chaos that nips at the heels of tragedy. There’s the hoarse shout of people in their last throws of death—wrestling with their demons and realizing that their fight is over. Clarke wants to rush forward, wants to press healer’s hands to the rattling expanse of Lexa’s chest, but that little whispering voice that says _she deserves this_ locks Clarke’s knees for a moment. Just one—a single second that seems to last an eternity before she’s pressing forward. Watching how her shadow stretches backwards, running away for every step she takes forward—the heat of the flames yawning and hissing, ragged red and orange grins that chew through thatch roofed huts and the remainder of buildings.

“Lexa,” her name’s a choked whisper on the blonde’s lips, an escaped epithet—she says the grounder’s name the same way those who never knew the stars say _Heda_. A certain kind of weight that’s solid, and absolutely there. “What’re you doing here?” She’s supposed to be halfway across the world—at least it seems like that sometimes—in Polis, not in the fringes of the lake people’s land.

“My people bleed, _Klark_. Seems I’m to bleed with them.” It’s the kind of visionary response Clark had learned to expect from her all these years later—when the wars seem to be more with words than they are with swords and guns. Clarke thinks Lexa doesn’t know what to do with herself half the time, it’s in the way she drifts through Polis when the Thirteen Clans gather for the spring awakening—how she still wears her war paint when even Indra has put hers away.

A girl-king who doesn’t know how to walk without the weight of her swords.

“I didn’t realize you were a doctor,” short, a little acerbic—Clarke can’t help flicking her tongue over her teeth as if they were a whet stone—sharpening her words into little daggers. Lexa only smiles—the lopsided kind of grin that doesn’t seem to properly settle on the Commander’s face. _I love you_ , it’s a dig somewhere in Clarke’s chest because somehow it’s still true.

“No _fisa_ can aid this,” she’s laughing, a bubbling gulp of a sound as black spills over her lip—one of the healers Clark brought rushes to help, but she stops them with an extended arm. Lexa’s pressing a shoulder against the cement of the building, the back of her wrist pulling harshly across her lips until her forearm has been painted black. “The will of the spirits has spoken—it will take the weak, and give us back the strong.” Sometimes the blonde wonders if Lexa actually believes in the spirits she speaks of—if she closes her eyes and asks them for forgiveness, or safety, or even just a moment of peace.

“So what, you thought it’d be noble to die with your people?” The anger isn’t a _surprise_ , not really—Clarke has spent the last seven years swallowing pills of anger, drinking down the poison that was hatred and fear. Worrying when the day comes that happiness is just a band aid over the larger wound beneath. Clarke can’t say exactly when she reached out to catch Lexa—but suddenly black blood stains her palms and pale green eyes squint like they’re looking into the sun. “Didn’t have any more wars to throw yourself at, so you decided to give sickness a shot?”

Lexa’s fingers hook over the palms cradling her face, pressing them more firmly into her skin. Lips parting to display white teeth turned gray with blood. “I’m twenty six summers on the whole moon, _Klark_.” The words rasp and skitter against Clarke’s cheek and she’s suddenly holding up more of Lexa’s weight than she realized. The warrior becoming brittle at her edges and peeling away until she’s just the girl beneath—gold skin going pale, bright eyes softening at the edges. The full moon—next week.

“This doesn’t seem like the best time to celebrate,” she’s trying to keep Lexa upright, trying to sandwich her collapsing body between her own and the cement wall. The brunette wrangles her feet so that she can remain, but pitches forward to rest her head on Clarke’s shoulder.

“No _Heda_ has lived past twenty-five,” rattling words, cracking and sharp, and Clarke feels dry lips against her neck. Nothing untoward, nothing sexual—just the desperate press of trying to feel something. Clarke wonders if twenty-five was Lexa’s eighteen—the moment everything changed in an instant. Open air locks and the only promise being the endless black of space. Death lingering between the starts like forgotten memories.

“So you’re what—checking out? You don’t get to just—pick something like that.” The words are snagged like little thorns in her throat. “You don’t just get to _decide_ to die.”

“No,” Lexa says, shaking her head—barely, because Clarke’s hands still have her by the jaw. Her graying eyes seem unable to focus, the pupils blown wide and harsh against the pale of her face.

“Griffin _,_ ” one of Abby’s best surgeons—Caldwell— strolls up with the straight spine and tipped chin of someone who thinks they’re above this kind of thing. “Doesn’t look airborne or contagious. Some brats dug up some grounder biological weapon—nasty little fucker.” He’s looking at Lexa like he wants to get his hands on her—its clinical and sharp. The kind of look that reminds Clarke of the mountain; of men behind plastic face masks promising that it was all just for survival.

“Where’s the rest of the infected?” There’s screaming, but Clarke can’t see anyone.

“They’re down for the count, too weak to even get up.” Chin tipping to Lexa, who is returning his look with frightening eyes—the green seeming impossibly bright, if only because the blood vessels in the whites of her eyes have burst, bleeding them to ink black. She looks feral and angled; her muscles quivering under her skin, her lip unable to stop how they pull back slightly into a half-snarl. “I’m surprised this one can even walk.”

Sometimes it still amazes Clarke how little the people inside Arkadia know.

“This one,” she stresses, watching how the grounder healers touch the cool metal of their weapons. Eyes alert, ready to draw—even all these years later you’ll still marvel at the loyalty of these people. “Happens to be your _Heda_.” Thirteen clans under the rule of a girl-king afraid of dying when she was expected to. Twenty-five—not twenty-six or the infinite amount of numbers after it.

“Technically,” he scoffs, rolling his shoulders and looking down at the radiation read out on the screen on his wrist.

Something about the dismissal cleaves away at the hazy focus and melting pain—Lexa’s pressing down on Clarke’s shoulder in such a way that keeps her on the ground, and propels the Commander to her feet. She sways, weaving enough that no one’s particularly convinced she’ll stay upright—until she digs in the heels of her boots and locks her legs. The sway’s there, but it’s buckled down by sheer force of will alone. Hand on the hilt of her blade with fingers going white with how tightly she’s holding it.

“That grounder biological weapon,” each word sharper than the last, clearer then the next makes Clarke blink—she didn’t think Lexa to be dull, hardly, but she’d always adhered to the grounder customs and phrasings. Everything seemed just a little more _mystical_ when someone born on Earth explained it. But not this—not now—it was said will the discerning eye of someone who knew something Caldwell didn’t. “Was a jettisoned annex filled with chemical waste from _your_ space station.”

Caldwell blinks, clearly not expecting to be so promptly put in his place—blinking murky eyes at the Commander, from her inked black eyes to the visible weapons on her person. “Nothing we had would do th—…”

“Even when mixed with radioactive water and fauna?” Clipped, shorter with each word, and Clarke saw how much harder it was for Lexa to breath—air being held captive in her lungs for the fear that it might simply whisk itself away.

The Commander doesn’t mind them much anymore, she’s turning toward Clarke with increasingly frantic eyes—the unconscious shiver of blistering bright pupils in bled black sclera. One step, two steps—Lexa walks back toward the village, without thought to the grounder healers falling instinctively into her wake. A procession Clarke can only join after a few moments—marveling at the glow of orange-red flames casting formless shadows onto the dirt rust colored with blood.

Clarke tries to ignore the distinct splatters of black within the rust.

.

.

Lexa isn’t getting better.

Clarke made sure she was in a room by herself when it came to waiting out the sickness—the village full of those who had come in contact with the spent piece of the Ark that had caused this.

“I burned it,” Lexa had coughed when asked about the twenty foot flame at the village’s center. “ _Reivon kom Skaikru_ advised us to do so.” Which explained how Lexa knew what it was—leave it to Raven to figure out the crisis before anyone actually showed up.

Lexa’s blinking at you sluggishly, sweating profusely and somehow being even waner in complexion than she had been an hour ago. Clarke had tried covering her in blankets, but the Commander seemed insistent on kicking them off, regardless of how exhausted the action made her. She’s watching Clarke quietly with heat addled eyes that never seem to properly focus, a listless green that flickers and sways as the fire in the center of the hut dwindles.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Clarke says finally.

Lexa doesn’t move.

“You’re supposed to be in Polis,” she continues, not looking anywhere but at the fire that she’s poking insistently with a rod. The flames hiss and flicker, growing large and wild for only a moment before they simmer low. “Ruling, or whatever.”

Seven years—it seems an impossibly long time when she really thinks about it. Time that she wouldn’t have thought possible after that first month—with the grounder’s army turning away at the gates, or that lever cold and lifeless beneath her palm. Seven years built on hard won trust, and equally beneficial relationships—with thwarted coups, and life or death battles.

Bridges—literal and figurative—built with hard work and dedication.

“Or whatever,” Lexa drawls, voice rasping and not capable of anything more.

“You know what I mean,” Clarke rolls her eyes, trying not to worry about the redness blotching Lexa’s cheeks or the weak shake of her fingers.

“You were right,” the sick girl confesses, closing her eyes and turning away from the fire. Clarke marvels at the shadows cast over sharp cheeks and a perfectly slanted jaw.

“—before, when you said I had no more wars.” Lexa continues, hand and arm shaking the blankets free so that she might lift them up and gaze at her fingers. Slender, long—but Clarke imagines Lexa’s looking for the blood long since washed free. “I had the peace I’d wanted for so long, and I didn’t know what to do with it.”

Clarke remembers standing before Lexa at Skaikru’s initiation as the Thirteenth clan—everyone dressed in their finest. Silks, and furs, and polished leathers—having shed their war regalia, put their weapons aside, their war paint away. Except Lexa. She’d stood on the dais with the severity of a vengeful god, and Clarke had remembered the striking image she’d posed that first meeting—sitting upon her antler throne, twirling a knife with fingers that could be as careful as they were deadly.

“You seem to be doing fine,” Clarke hesitates, wincing a little, “—not _fine_ fine, considering you’re—.” She trails off, trying to ignore the black blood slipping from the corner of Lexa’s eye.

The Commander laughs.

.

.

“Was it cold up there?”

Lexa’s voice is soft—an easily mistaken whisper in the dark. Clarke turns in her chair, curling knees up and under her chin so that she might wrap her arms around them.

“Not especially,” Clarke says, chin resting on her knee, fingers curling tightly into the fabric of her pants—she wants to reach out, wants to do something other than dab at the black blood pooling at the corners of Lexa’s eyes, or dripping from her ear and into the already stained braids of her hair.

_Not long now_ , her mother had said when they radioed in; no one who had handled the chemical directly was still alive—no one except Lexa. Apparently the Commander had taken it upon herself to burn the chemical waste when Raven had determined its origin—a jettisoned science-wing from nearly sixty years ago. One that had been messing around with artificial organics deemed too dangerous to keep aboard.

No one expected Lexa to live—not Abby, not Raven, and none of the Arkadian medics—but Clarke had to believe otherwise.

Clarke had to believe in the impossible, because reality had the horrible tendency of being—well, horrible.

“You don’t sound so sure,” Lexa says, turning burning green eyes to look at Clarke—even hazy and unfocused, they were beautiful eyes. Bright with things other than the fever that made the Commander’s skin slick and flushed. The whites of her eyes haven darkened with burst blood vessels, they looked inhuman—unnatural in many ways.

“I just—I didn’t realize, I guess.” Clarke elaborates, shrugging a little and feeling kind of silly. “Being up there, you don’t think about seasons, or weather, or—anything like that. It just— _is._ ”

Lexa looks at Clarke as she often does, like she _understands_ , and it makes something in her heart clench—the part that says _we can work this out_ , and _I forgive you_. The parts Clarke had gotten so good at shaking off just before she did something stupid like kiss the girl-king in front of her.

“It sounds hopeless,” Lexa whispers, eyes blinking slowly, lips pulling into something that might’ve been a smile if she had even a little energy. “Never having anything to look forward to—spring, the first snow, autumn leaves, summer showers.”

_Hopeless_. It isn’t exactly what Clarke was going for, but something about the stale air and the metallic hum didn’t dissuade the notion.

“I had something to look forward to,” Clarke smiles—small and private—a secret ready to be told.

“What?”

“The ground,” sketches of trees, and towers, and heavy hung moons. Clarke had tried to breathe life into each and every sketch upon the floor of her cell—into the world she knew was just outside her little tin box.

Lexa shifts, leaning up on one elbow—shaking and breathing heavy—Clarke looks at the hand set upon her foot. Lexa’s fingers frigid with poor circulation, but they’re soft—something that always surprises Clarke. Always. “Was it worth it?” She asks, blinking away the haze for just a moment—looking, properly, like herself for the first time in hours.

Leaning forward, Clarke gather’s Lexa’s hand between hers—capturing those cold fingers between her palms. Blue eyes bright and, maybe, just a little wet. “I’ll answer that when you get better.”

Lexa frowns, “Clarke…” she begins chidingly, so very good at accepting her fates.

“When you get better,” she repeats, a little firmer—a little desperate—because this isn’t _fair_. Just when that little voice was getting too loud to ignore, too brazen to shove aside—when _I forgive you_ , and _I love you_ loop with alarming frequency through her mind.

It isn’t _fair_.

Lexa doesn’t move, still up on one elbow, before she collapses back into the bedding, eyes closed, and absolutely still. Clarke freezes, pressing a little on the limp fingers in her hold, heart quickening in her chest—but then they squeeze back. Lexa doesn’t move, doesn’t open her eyes, but she says, “when I get better.”

Was it worth it?

_Yes_.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hey to me on tumblr @ **civilorange** ; I'm harmless, promise. I accept messages, prompts, pats on the back, and anything in between! Please excuse all the ridiculous things I reblog.


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